How do I run the licensing tool to request and install a license?

Hello, everybody. This is Jeremy Moskowitz, Group Policy MVP and Founder of PolicyPak Software. In this video, we’re going to talk all about how to get PolicyPak licensed.

First and foremost, you can see here this is the download, the ISO file that we supply to you in your trial. One of the directories inside is “Licensing.” There are two things here. One is a little program that doesn’t launch. There’s no reason to try to launch it. The other utility is “LT.”

When we go ahead and launch LT, it will ask for administrative credentials. If you are a domain admin, it’s best that you run with domain admin rights. We’re about to count the number of computers in your domain. I’ll type in my password here.

The main thing that we’re going to do here is “Generate a License Request Key” file and then later “Install a license received from PolicyPak.” But actually, we can get started here at the bottom: “Find and Disable unused computers” because, remember, PolicyPak is licensed per Active Directory computer account that you have in your domain and in your OUs. If you’ve got some that are not used, you can find and disable them. That’s exactly what we’re going to here.

You can specify “Show computers without logons for [N] number of days,” like “100” days. You can optionally “Include computers which have NEVER been logged on to by any users.” Maybe you have some old and crusty computer accounts that are just sitting there. We don’t want you to have to pay for them, so we give you this little freebie utility so you can click-click-click on the computers and then, again, it will actively disable them inside Active Directory Users and Computers. It will not move them for you. It simply will disable the computers that you selected. Now, that’s it. You’ve reduced your count.

The next thing you’re going to do is to “Generate a License Request Key.” If you are planning on licensing Terminal Server machines, on the very next screen here you’ll see you get a warning: “If you’re looking to license both regular computers AND Terminal Services/Citrix computers, then this utility must be run from a computer running Windows Server.” That’s the little catch here.

Let’s go ahead and close this out. We’ll go over to a server, and we’ll rerun the utility over on a server. If you’re not planning on licensing Terminal Server or Citrix machines, you can in fact continue onward with all the steps from a Windows 7 machine. But if you’re planning on using Terminal Services or Citrix with PolicyPak, we do request that you run it from a server machine.

Let me go ahead and run “LT” here. We’ll start off by, again, selecting “Generate a License Request Key.” We’ll go ahead and click “Next” here. This is where it takes a moment or maybe two moments or perhaps up to three moments if you’ve got a really large Active Directory. We count all the computer accounts in your Active Directory, plus we touch all of your Terminal Server or Citrix machines and get an accurate count of the licensing that you’re using. We’ll give this a second to complete here.

Okay, and now we’re at the first screen. The first screen is asking you “Who Are You?” That’s the key question on the first screen – “Who Are You?” If you are a domain admin, we suggest you select the entire domain.

Now to be clear, this is not where you’re going to use PolicyPak. Let me say that again. Even if you are the domain admin and you select you are the ruler of the whole domain, that’s cool but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be using PolicyPak there. Conversely, if you are in charge of the Sales team, that’s cool too. You would select the “Sales” OU, and it will automatically select the sub-OUs within them as well. The first question, again, is simply “Who Are You?” It is not deciding where you’re going to use PolicyPak.

When you click “Next,” now you’ll see a subset of the place that you said you were the owner of. Now let’s say you wanted to use it against all of “Sales.” That’s great. Or maybe you want to use it on the “CITRIX” machines, the “Desktops” and the “Laptops” of the “East Sales,” but maybe you’re not quite ready yet for the “West Sales.”

Look what we do here. We’re cherry-picking particular OUs. You can see here this one is probably going to contain my “CITRIX” machines, my “Desktops” and my “Laptops” machines. We do what’s called a running count. You can see here that we’ve got some “Trial computers” that don’t count. “Disabled Computers” don’t count. We only count active computer accounts plus your Terminal Server connections.

The grand total in my little demo station here is “12” machines. That’s all we’re doing. We’re just figuring out how many computers are in each particular OU. We suggest that the higher up you go the more flexible things become, but you’re welcome to pick just the locations that you wish as you see fit. Long story short, this number is the number that we’re going to be licensing is “12” here. That includes your “Windows Computers” and your “TS/Citrix connections.” The grand total on this little demo station is “12” active accounts.

When you’re done here, we have this file that you’re going to “Save to File.” Put it in someplace for us. I’ve already got a file here, so I’ll call this “FABRIKAM-License-Request-Key2” because I already have one here, and I’ll hit “Save.” This is what you’re going to send to your sales team here at PolicyPak in order to get licensed – either a full license key that will last a year or a trial key that will last usually up to 90 days.

Once you get the license from us, you’re then going to “Install a license received from PolicyPak.” You’ll click “Next.” You’ll “Browse” for the file, pick the actual license that we send you. Don’t pick the license request key that you sent us. That won’t help you. Pick the license key that we send you. We ask you to “Validate” it because in case it gets blown up over email or something.

Then you go into “Create GPO.” Remember, in my little example here, I said that I was in charge of the Sales OU, not the entire domain. If I was in charge of the entire domain, this would say that it would be linking to the whole domain. Again, it’s not going to be used against the whole domain, but it’s linked high enough that all the places that you want to use it will, in fact, get the signal and get the license.

We’ll go ahead and we’ll click “OK” here. It’s creating the Group Policy Object. If you have any issues creating the Group Policy Object license – if you don’t get “License installed” – we do have a troubleshooting, the licensing tool wizard video, that would be good for you to watch if you have trouble there.

Go ahead and click “OK” here. We’ll click “Close,” and let’s see what it did. Let’s go over to the GPMC here. We’ll refresh our Group Policy Objects. Let’s go ahead and do a quick refresh, and there we go. What we see here is that it created a Group Policy Object called “PolicyPak License for PolicyPak Professional,” and it expires whatever it’s supposed to expire. Inside the Group Policy Object, all we’re doing is we’re putting some dates in there on both the user side and the computer side. We’re just putting some dates for when it expires.

We suggest that you also right click over the link and select “Enforced.” The reason why is that if somebody lower here, say in “East Sales Desktops,” decides they’re going to “Block Inheritance,” the enforced property on the Group Policy Object will ensure that it can go through and affect correctly your East Sales Desktop machines. Let me say that again. For your license that you’ve just installed, we suggest that you right click and enforce the Group Policy link so that way it affects everybody.

That’s it. It’s just that simple to get licensed. If you have any questions about that, again, we have a video on how to troubleshoot that. Of course, we’re here if you have anything past that.

Thanks so very much. Looking forward to getting you on board into your PolicyPak trial or welcomed aboard as a customer.